


Routes and Destinations

by erlenwein



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: A translation of my own work, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Amnesia, Author is not a native English speaker, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11761077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlenwein/pseuds/erlenwein
Summary: Roy meets his eyes — he never blinks, and Hughes feels like he's staring into the abyss. The abyss stares back into Hughes; Hughes turns the turn signal on.





	Routes and Destinations

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Дорога назад](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423164) by [erlenwein](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlenwein/pseuds/erlenwein). 



> The original fic was written in Russian for Hiromu Arakawa team at Fandom Combat 2016, beta-reading done by Miroveha. This translation was beta-read by Xerxesians; I am eternally grateful for their help!!
> 
> Any mistakes left are my own; if you notice something please tell me so!
> 
> My tumblr is http://erlenwein.tumblr.com/
> 
> Day 4 of Hyuroi Week 2017 - 'I’ll Always Be By Your Side'

The trunk is full of crap. Hughes can’t remember why they need all the guns, but Roy claims that's how it's supposed to be. All the stuff was already in the car when they picked it up, he says, sing-songy; should they really throw it away?

Hughes doesn't understand the logic, but he doesn't argue either; after all, it's Roy who sets the rules.

 

The rules are simple: they drive. Hughes has no idea where, has no idea why, has no idea how far they've gone and how much they still have left.

Roy doesn't answer his questions — he shrugs and gives what’s probably the dumbest answer he can think of.

‘Where are we going? Forward.’

‘Why are we going? We'll get it when we'll get there.’

‘How long have we been going? Doesn't matter — we’re not here yet.’

 

Questions like these seem to annoy Roy — he lifts his gaze from the map he always holds upside-down, and pulls off his sunglasses: the black abysses of his eyes hypnotize Hughes. A couple of times he barely catches the wheel in time, held by this gaze; Roy just puts his shades back on and turns back to the map.

 

They drive through the plains, the mountains, forests, deserts, and fields. The landscape changes unpredictably — sometimes they stop to catch some sleep in the field and then wake up in the forest, drive through the same places several times; every town they go into is an exact copy of the one they left behind.

In the towns, Roy gets animated; he talks to people, once bums a smoke from a guy in a wheelchair, stacks the cigarette behind his ear and leaves it here for several days. He talks to the guy as if he were a friend, but the guy doesn't answer his questions, and Roy goes back to the car. Hughes doesn’t interrupt; he has nothing to say. But nobody talks to him anyway, everybody is looking at Roy — with his shades, his unbuttoned shirt, the coat he wears like a cape. Hughes himself wears the uniform of an army he never heard of, with rank insignia he doesn't recognise; his glasses are shattered, and his pockets are full of things he's never seen before. Hughes doesn't really need the glasses, but he wears them out of habit, takes them off only to sleep; it feels wrong not to wear them around.

 

A couple of times he borrows Roy's shades; Roy lets him and stares at him while Hughes adjusts the rearview mirror. Shades suit him, but they don't look right. When Roy asks what Hughes sees without his glasses, Hughes merely shrugs. The world as it is; same as with glasses on.

Roy looks surprised; he tries to explain and gives up in the middle of the sentence. He doesn't see the world without shades the way it is; he sees the world in flames, smoke, sparks, ashes, all at once. He compares it to looking at the road for too long, when it appears before you even if you close your eyes.

So Roy almost never takes his shades off; he hides not from others, but from himself. He is convinced that the world in flames is somehow entirely his fault, and Hughes has no idea how to convince him it is not.

No man is capable of such a thing; at least, _Hughes_ isn’t capable, but...

 

But he doesn't know who he is, what he is; unlike Roy, Hughes is mostly uninjured. Nothing to hide behind the shades, no reason to wear gloves — Roy's palms bleed non-stop, so it's Hughes behind the wheel, and Roy keeps his hands in his pockets. All Hughes has are scars from wounds that would kill anybody; not a big deal. Once, while on the road, he'd seen a girl with her throat slashed, and she seemed to be okay with that. ‘Tired of all the laundry,’ she’d said to Roy, ignoring Hughes completely, ‘but it gets better.’

Roy had asked her a million questions and didn't get a single answer; he had then said to Hughes that she didn’t remember things she should have remembered.

How did he know what she ought to remember? What, in Roy's opinion, should _Hughes_ remember? Who is he? How did he get here?

Hughes feels like he's missing something; when he asks, Roy shrugs again.

 

How Roy got here, Hughes does not remember. How did they meet? He suspects the car doesn’t belong to them, but that's it; it’s all blank past this point.

Roy meets his eyes — he never blinks, and Hughes feels like he's staring into the abyss. The abyss stares back into Hughes; Hughes turns the turn signal on.

 

They stop at motels and sleep under the stars. They sleep in the car when it rains, and they light up fire in abandoned houses. Neither of them needs any sleep, but Hughes likes that silly habit — they snuggle together, despite the lack of body heat. Fire doesn't warm them either; Hughes starts to doubt whether the heat exists at all.

He wakes up once in the middle of the night: Roy, always awake, turns next to him, slides his hand across Hughes' thigh, smearing the blood on his uniform. Hughes takes Roy's shades off and looks into his empty eyes.

'I’ve lost something,' he says. 'I need to find it. I need to know what it was.'

Roy yawns and sits up.

'Now you understand,' he says, and yawns again.

 

They drive again in the morning. Hughes is almost certain they've been here before. Roy does not look at the map, gives no directions, so Hughes trusts his gut feeling: he skips a turn, then two, turns on the third, circles the interchange, stops at a empty crossroad and waits. Roy whistles a silly song.

'When will we arrive?' he asks curiously, as if checking if Hughes knows the answer, and Hughes shrugs.

'When we find what we are looking for.'

'And if one of us finds it first?'

'Then the other will go farther alone.' Hughes turns to the town.

 

They don't use the guns — Hughes puts a gun in his empty holster, but never has the chance to use it. Nobody attacks them; they don't attack anybody; in the end they just dump the guns somewhere in the field and continue driving. Roy marks the place on his map; when he unfolds it next day, there’re no marks on it.

Their inner compasses make them go in circles; they pass places they've been already.

'What we look for is looking for us.' Roy lights the cigarette he bummed.

Hughes side-eyes him. 'Why do I feel like it's no good at all?'

 

The farther they go, the less Hughes likes it. They meet others — those who look for things they've lost. Nobody knows where to go, nobody knows what to search for. Some walk, some run, some ride, some drive — some stay in one place waiting for those who'll come to get them.

Some run from those who are searching for them. Some wait for their time to go looking.

 

A journey with no beginning, a journey with no end. Hughes stops the car when his guts tell him to keep going; Roy, who was dozing off, is now wide awake.

'What now?'

'I’m tired.' Hughes drops his head on the wheel. 'What if we never find it. What if no-one will ever find us?'

'Then we'll just drive forever. But it's better than staying in one place.'

Roy takes off his shades and rubs his eyes — blacker than midnight, eyelashes long. The blood on his hands has dried; Hughes stares at him for a moment and turns the engine on.

 

Maybe they'll find it tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Maybe in few years, or never.

But Hughes will not stop looking — as long as his heart leads him forward, he'll go. They’re all dead already anyway; what else can happen?

 

***

 

The road, the road; the same for weeks, if not for months. Roy starts yawning, dozing off; Hughes side-eyes him when Roy looks away. They know each other somehow — Hughes recognises his gestures, his intonations, he remembers how Roy swears, laughs, moans, and shouts. When Hughes asks about that, Roy doesn't answer: he looks away, twiddles the useless map, as if he knows something he doesn't want to share. Something he doesn't want to know but knows anyway. Hughes thinks that it's incredibly unfair — he doesn't remember, but he wants to know; Roy does remember, but he will not share.

 

Some things Hughes can figure out on his own. He was there before Roy came, that's why he's a bit better in understanding the rules of their world. But now it's Roy who knows what's really going on, and all Hughes can do is to follow him. It's fortunate they're headed in the same direction, isn't it? Hughes doesn't want to think they'll have to go their own ways at some point.

He’s not even sure if ‘Hughes’ is his real name. He doesn’t remember if it is. That’s what Roy called him, when they first met; somehow it felt right at the moment.

But he feels that the end of the journey is approaching. They meet fewer people now — they can go for weeks without seeing a living soul or a building. Roy spends more time without his shades; one day he proclaims his visions are gone. He's excited about it; Hughes isn't.

 

The setting sun leaves them in the fields; tangled together, they lie on the ground. Hughes buries his face in Roy's hair; Roy smells of smoke, and Hughes is so used to that smell that he can't imagine anything else. Roy doesn't move, letting Hughes explore his skin under the shirt; Hughes makes good on the opportunity. He likes Roy's waist, and he puts his hand on Roy's side — and freezes when he feels a scar under his fingers. That — that Hughes doesn't remember. To prove himself wrong, he unbuttons Roy's shirt — and he sees the scar in its ugly glory: skin tight and bumpy, as if it was burned and healed badly. Hughes could swear that the scar wasn't there before.

Roy sits up looks at him.

'It appeared after you... after you got here,' he says quietly, adjusting his shirt. Hughes sits next to him. He can't explain why it has him so unsettled; he was sure he knew Roy inside out, but it turns out...

Roy lies back down, and Hughes sets on exploring his body again; he slides his fingers across Roy's chest, and lower, and lower; but when he gets to Roy's belt, Roy catches his hand and pulls it aside.

'Don't,' he says in the same quiet voice, sitting up once more. 'We're not... we shouldn't do that.'

He gently touches Hughes' fingers — touches a ring on Hughes' ring finger. Hughes watches him in confusion. Roy smiles bitterly. Hughes frees his hand and takes off the ring, fiddles with it. He never noticed it before, but now he can see a thin line of lighter skin where the ring usually sits.

'Does it mean something?'

Roy nods. 'Those who love each other exchange rings and vow fidelity and eternal love. They promise to love and to cherish each other, until death do them part... You said it was the happiest day of your life.'

Hughes looks at Roy's hands — no gloves today, and there are no rings, no indications that he ever wore any.

'And where is yours?' Hughes asks.

Roy shrugs indifferently. 'You didn't vow fidelity to me,' he answers in a small, strained voice and lies down without meeting Hughes' eyes.

Hughes looks at his ring again — and then he throws it away, as far as he can manage. Whoever it was, who gave Hughes the ring, wasn't Roy; Hughes doesn't remember who they were, doesn't remember if he should care.

They aren’t here, but Roy is; Hughes hugs him tight, and closes his eyes till morning.

When the sun rises, the ring is back on his finger.

 

They keep driving. The grey sky hangs low; the grey plains seem endless. Everything is the same, nothing changes; but Roy elbows him, and Hughes keeps his eyes on the road. There's a boy standing on the side of the road. Hughes stops the car.

The boy snatches his crutch from the ground and jumps to the car, empty sleeve tied in a knot, empty trouser leg hanging loose.

Roy lights up and leaves the car; he and the boy talk for a minute while Hughes watches. A man follows the boy — same long golden hair, but his skin is cracked like the ground after weeks of no rain.

Hughes comes closer, and Roy introduces them. The boy, Ed; his father, Van Hohenheim; his brother, Al. Al is nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the party doesn't seem to notice that: they talk to the empty spot, and it seems to answer — to everyone but Hughes.

'They’re headed in the same direction,' says Roy before Hughes can even ask. 'Start the car, we'll come in a second.'

 

Now they travel in five; Hughes still doesn't see Al, but he's getting used to it. Their companions tell them what they saw in their travels, and ask Roy what he saw. Hughes becomes merely an addition to the vehicle; his job is to drive the car, nothing more.

In the evening, when they stop to get some unnecessary rest at an abandoned house, Roy leaves to talk with the man. Hughes stays inside with the boy, who's banging his crutch on the squeaky floor, too agitated to sit still. He talks to Hughes as if they know each other, but when Hughes asks the boy about it, he gets defensive.

Hughes is patient, but the boy is not; when Hughes repeats the question for fifth or sixth time, the boy explodes.

'What's the point of even telling you anything?' He hits the floor with his crutch again. 'You won't remember a thing! We tried that with others, and no-one remembers more than they're supposed to!'

Hughes grinds his teeth.

'Hey! My memory may be shit, but it's not as bad as you claim!' He stands up, and the boy tries to cross his arms, but fails and almost falls down. Somebody invisible catches him and gives him his crutch.

'Fine. Want to check?' he asks, and Hughes nods. 'Great. What’s my name?'

Hughes opens his mouth — and realises he doesn't know the answer.

'Did you mention it?' he tries, and the boy huffs and leaves the room; his imaginary brother follows suit.

 

His words keep swirling in Hughes' memory. He has to know.

In the night he comes to Roy. Roy lies with his eyes wide open, and in the gloomy twilight his silhouette seems awfully familiar.

Hughes lies down next to him and squeezes Roy's hand so tight that it'd hurt if any of them could feel pain.

'Do you remember me? How we know each other? Don't answer out loud, just nod.'

Roy nods; he stares into the ceiling, and Hughes is forced to remember the black abysses Roy used to hide behind his shades. Now he has nothing to hide, he doesn't wear his gloves anymore: the wounds on his hands heal, and soon they won't be visible at all.

Hughes swallows; he wants to know, he needs to know.

'Have you ever told me that?' he asks, voice trembling. Roy nods again, and Hughes hugs him without saying anything else.

They stay like this till dawn. Roy doesn't move, as if turned to stone in Hughes' embrace; Hughes keeps thinking about all their talks, and he can't remember a single one about their past.

The boy be damned — he was completely right. When morning comes, Hughes can't remember what the boy told him.

 

Hughes drives forward, led by his inner compass, and everyone else agrees. Does that mean their compasses lead them all the same direction? Hughes has no idea where they're going: looking for another invisible sibling? New arm for the boy?

His passengers chat; the man argues with himself in different voices, the boy tells a story — they lived somewhere before hitting the road, they lived with somebody else. Somebody they knew, but who didn't know them; no matter how many times she was told who they were, she forgot it again. The boy sniffles.

'We just had to leave,' he says. 'We've been telling her every day, and every day we've been losing her over and over again.'

The man nods.

'She remembered my name, but that was it.' He exhales noisily.

Roy stares into the window; Hughes wants to touch him, but decides against it.

'You'll have to leave, you know that,' the man coughs, and Roy jolts awake from his slumber.

'I know,' he says gloomily. The passengers look at each other; Hughes pretends he saw and heard nothing.

That was expected — Roy had mentioned once that they'll have to go their separate ways at some point. Everybody has to, but Hughes foolishly hoped he could keep Roy around for longer, or leave with him...

It's not like he's going to miss a lot if he leaves, right?

 

***

 

They have to abandon the car.

Now they go by foot — the boy with his crutch leads the group; Hughes is the last one: he stares at Roy's back, trying to sort his memories. He remembers too much and not enough. He doesn't want to ask — the boy seems to know him, but it's not like he knows everything, and asking Roy again and again is just plain cruel. They were close, that much is obvious, but then... then something happened.

 

They keep walking until they reach a house — decaying, falling apart, like the most buildings they've seen so far. The boy looks at it as if he's been here before. Hughes comes closer. His instincts tell him — this is here, this is it, that they've been looking for. They're finally here; who knows how long they'll stay.

The man opens the door. Somebody's wailing inside — Hughes shivers from the sound.

 

He's the first to enter; Hughes feels as if he has nothing to fear anymore. Nothing can happen to him; he's not sure about his companions. He follows the sound: it leads him a big room. The wail dies out; a giant stands up from the floor.

In the center of the room, there is a woman; she sits with her legs crossed, she spins a lace of semi-familiar symbols, intertwined circles. Pieces of chalk are scattered around her. She ignores Hughes; only when he steps back, and the floor squeaks under his shoe, does she lift her head to look straight at him.

'You're finally here,' she says, putting the chalk down. 'Took you some time. They're friends,' she adds, aside, and the giant stumbles back to his corner.

Roy walks past Hughes and sits on the floor next to her; their passengers join them.

 

The four — the five of them — talk for what feels like hours, and keep talking when Hughes goes up to the second floor and lies down, trying to fall asleep. Something isn’t quite right; eventually he pinpoints the feeling.

The inner compass is gone; it's not leading him anywhere. Looks like he's done what he was supposed to do; he’s brought them all together — is this his cue to exit the stage? He did what he should, now he's free to go; what happens next is not his concern.

The voices downstairs are louder now; they’ve clearly forgotten about Hughes and the giant. The giant comes up here too, half-mad, utterly lost, and Hughes sits up to move closer to him. They have nothing to talk about — Hughes is not quite sure the giant _can_ talk; so they sit here in silence, and Hughes tries to catch at least some of the talk downstairs without attracting too much attention. He’s not supposed to listen in, since the talk’s not related to him — or they’d ask him to stay, right?

 

He doesn't hear much; he understands even less than he hears. They're planning how to get out of here, the five of them, invisible boy included. Hughes and the giant excluded — the giant is meant to follow them somehow, and Hughes himself, well...

'He's not supposed to be up there,' the boy says, and others agree with him. Roy's silent; whatever opinion he has, he doesn't voice it.

What Hughes does understand, is not calming. He's not like the others; that much is obvious. But they ended up here accidentally, against their will, in some madman's plot to devour the world; Hughes is meant to be here in this eternal emptiness. Wherever it was where he was before, he's not meant to go back. Even Roy seems to accept that; he's mostly silent, and when he does speak, his voice is sullen: he seems to be the only one to remember Hughes was within listening distance.

They'll have to part — they'll have to part _again_ — and Hughes can't even remember how they parted that last one time.

 

Downstairs they keep talking; upstairs they keep listening. The five of them are going to leave together, that's the only way. They came here together; together they'll leave. The rest of the newcomers must follow — all those who aren't supposed to be here, who came here recently; those who haven't yet grasped how this world works.

Hughes hasn't been here for long, but he can tell these newcomers from the rest. It's hard not to look down on them, on those who don't understand that to get here, they all had to die at some point.

So they'll take all newcomers with them. Roy will leave, and Hughes will be alone again. He doesn't want to return to how it was — among people he doesn't remember, in a world where he has no goal. He doesn't remember what he did before Roy, what his name was; it feels now as if he was always waiting for Roy to come and get him; and when Roy finally came, they got a car and went searching.

But how does Hughes ask him to stay? What can possibly make Roy stay here with him? Could Hughes use brutal force and live with knowing that Roy would be here against his will? Should Hughes kill him and hope he'll get revived here properly? In this world, nobody dies, nobody gets sick; newcomers appear out of thin air.

 

The voices get quieter, but the talk continues. Hughes is tired of listening, so he lies down again. When the sky turns a lighter shade, Roy comes, stepping lightly on the squeaky floor, and lies next to Hughes. There's a wrinkle between his brows, and the corners of his mouth are turned down; Hughes pulls him closer and tries not to think about how easy it is to slash his throat, to break his neck, to squeeze his throat until he stops breathing. Until he stays here forever.

He'll ask him tomorrow, he'll definitely ask — Roy will leave him anyway, but at least Hughes can calm his conscience: he tried, and Roy made his choice.

But tomorrow's already here. Hughes threads his hand in Roy's hair, weaving this moment into his memory. He's afraid that he'll forget Roy the moment they part; he didn't remember him before Roy came, and there's no proof he'll remember Roy after he's gone.

 

Roy doesn't stay long; he stands up again and goes downstairs, back to the plan. The giant is long gone, his wailing coming from outside of the house. Hughes goes downstairs too: he pauses at the open door, watching the five. The woman is drawing something on the floor, and when she stands up, Hughes can't stop staring at her stomach — its’ as if somebody took her intestines, leaving an empty shell. Hughes briefly wonders how he’d missed it before — but, in his defence, he wasn’t looking.

Why is Roy the only one who's healing? Is it a sign that he should stay? Is Hughes just seeing things? But he remembers how when Roy first took off his shades, the abysses of his eyes captivated Hughes, captured him into following Roy. Now Roy barely ever wears shades; his eyes look completely normal, only their color reminding Hughes of the abysses he’d seen before. The wounds on Roy's hands bled, when he first came; now even Hughes can't always find them. Is it this world, that's slowly enslaving Roy as it did with Hughes? Time passes here, though it shouldn't; Roy's the only one who's affected.

The boy meets Hughes' gaze; Hughes nods to him and goes outside.

 

The sun doesn't shine; the grey sky doesn’t change. Hughes walks faster and faster — but nothing around him moves, and he stays in one place, as if enchanted to never leave this house. He circles the house — that works. He tries to go farther away — but the circle around the house doesn't let him.

There’s no explanation possible, and none needed; when Hughes throws a stone, it bounces back as if there were a wall.

When the man leaves the house, Hughes asks him to step outside. The circle lets him.

 

Hughes stays out of the house till the dark; he looks at the sky, at a sunset so ugly, it's as if it was created by somebody who'd never seen a sunset before. He doesn't want to think about the plan, but his thoughts circle back to it against his will. The five are leaving tomorrow; it all comes to an end. One last night left, and in the morning Roy will be gone. And it feels like Hughes — or, the self he _knows_ as Hughes — will just dissolve.

The voices are silent. Roy steps outside and sits next to Hughes; Hughes hugs him awkwardly.

'Have you decided?' he asks, and Roy nods and rests his head on Hughes' shoulder.

'Yes. Tomorrow, at dawn. I hope it'll work out.'

Hughes nods. He can't wish them luck, though he knows he ought to. They sit in silence, until Roy straightens, same stubborn expression on his face, the wrinkle even more visible now. He takes out his gloves, blood-stained and worn, and gives them to Hughes; Hughes accepts them with gratitude.

'I want you to have them' — Roy hugs Hughes — 'to remind you... of something, at least.'

Hughes puts his arm around Roy's shoulders.

'Thank you,' he says, and means it. 'I'll try not to forget. Let's go inside, you need some rest.'

 

They lie down on the second floor — Roy closes his eyes, and Hughes tries to smooth the wrinkle with an air-light kiss. Hughes takes off his ring and hides it away, then squeezes the gloves in his hand. That's how their last night goes: with Roy's steady breathing, while Hughes does his best to immortalize him.

The morning seems to come later than usual, and the boy hits Hughes' ribs with his crutch to wake them both up. The boy, of course, notices the gloves, but says nothing about it, and goes down the stairs with the help of his invisible brother. Roy follows without saying a word.

Hughes goes outside without stopping at the door of the big room; he lies on the grass and watches the low sky. He can hear the others’ voices if he listens for them, but he doesn't want to.

The five of them start what they’ve planned — Hughes sees blue lightning, and the sky starts to fall apart — like an old fabric tugged from different sides. The same happens to the grass, to the house; his inner compass awakens, and Hughes feels himself being pulled forward again.

His body feels weightless. Hughes closes his eyes.

 

***

 

He jolts awake in the darkness, catching the sparks of his dream, but it’s useless — all he can remember is the trunk of the car, filled with crap.

The smell of wet dirt fills his coffin; Hughes wrinkles his nose in disgust. He was buried without his glasses, and the lack of a ring feels disturbing; after searching his pockets he finds a pair of sticky-stained gloves.

Was that a dream? Was it a vision? Who knows; Hughes'll have to find out later.

But he has to get out of here first; some digging will be required.


End file.
